Teachers bond through department lunch meetings

Every Tuesday during lunch, Spanish teacher Arnaldo Rodriguex hosts world language department meetings in his room. For more than 25 years, the teachers in the world language department chat about current department updates over food.

Spanish teacher Bret Yeilding said that the lunch meetings were primarily set up to discuss business-oriented subjects, but the meetings have evolved into a slightly more friendly and personal atmosphere.

“Every once in the while, somebody makes food and shares with the rest of the teachers if it’s a special holiday,” Yeilding said.

Similarly, the science department holds lunch meetings throughout the school year. Although the meetings are not held regularly, they help science teachers become better friends.

“[The science department] doesn’t have meetings very often, but when we do, the teachers all collaborate and discuss department-related topics,” science department chair Jenny Garcia said.

In addition, the math department holds weekly lunch meetings in the math office. Math teacher Audrey Warmuth considers the meetings “great ways to have the staff members get to know one other.”

Warmuth noted that the lunch meetings have been a tradition at the school.

“Saratoga has a history of people eating within departments,” said Warmuth. “Other schools have a different tradition of having the teachers meet in their staff room during lunch because they have a staff room. But on this campus, we don’t go down there for lunch.”

The teachers use the time to collaborate and to share ideas.

“[The teachers] were talking at lunch, and Ms. Patel and I were talking about the 5-step solving method,” said Warmuth. “We compared our methods, and it was interesting to see that our own processes were almost identical.”

The meetings have been going on for over 20 years. From the years that Warmuth has been teaching here, she noticed that the department lunches have both a good and bad side.

“They’re great because they let us know our colleagues better in the departments,” she said. “But it would be nice to get to know the other teachers from different departments as well.”